


Lifeline (The Louder Than Words Remix)

by Isis



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Community: remixthedrabble, Drabble, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-03
Updated: 2008-04-03
Packaged: 2019-06-12 03:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15330573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: It rained the morning Duck McDonald left home.





	Lifeline (The Louder Than Words Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Quiet in Drowning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4880833) by [Nos4a2no9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nos4a2no9/pseuds/Nos4a2no9). 



> Written for Remix the Drabble round 4.

It rained the morning Duck McDonald left home. Despite the gray pre-dawn drizzle, Buddy recognized the slim figure hurrying past his house toward the ferry terminal. Pulling on a slicker, he slipped out the door.

Duck’s face was bruised. Duck wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Buddy pretended to believe it had been Duck’s dad who’d worked him over. But he’d seen Tommy swaggering, bragging, calling Duck a faggot, a pervert. He’d seen Tommy’s bloody knuckles.

This is why I want to be a cop, he thought fiercely, waving as the ferry dissolved into mist. When Duck returned, Wilby would be different.

**Author's Note:**

> I beta-read the original story, and so I felt as though I knew it intimately. The slight hint of Duck/Buddy bothered me a bit (this is one pairing that weirds me out a little) and so I had thought about Buddy a lot in the beta process, trying to decide if his behavior overall made sense to me. (Nos correctly guessed I'd written this, which didn't surprise me at all, because so many of the things I said in beta came out in this drabble.)
> 
> This is the type of remix story in which I treat Nos's story as the truth of what happened. This is a perfect kind of story to remix this way, because the character whose POV I chose is not actually present for most of the events of the story, and therefore I could avoid the dreaded rehash. Plus, I adore Nos's narrative of events: it's painful and wrenching and visceral. The big trick for this story, for me, was to convey the sense of what Buddy knows about what's happened, and the sympathy and understanding he shows in the last scene of Nos's story, in just a drabble's worth of words. Especially since I felt the need to use up the first eight by using her first line, verbatim, to ground the story within hers, and because I wanted to use the ending to bring the story back home to Buddy, to make it about him. It took a lot of rewriting and refining, but I'm pleased with the way it came out.


End file.
